The U's-letter: Issue #3

Brilliant debuts, a crazy game of football, and some much needed bullishness: find out what's been going on this week at Cambridge United

As I write Issue #3 of the U’s-letter on a warm August afternoon, the transfer window is just over 24 hours away from slamming shut. The U’s are, at the time of writing, still on the hunt for that seemingly elusive number 9.

By the time you get around to reading this, there is a chance there has been some movement on that front, and you will be seeing the world in a much more positive light. But as it stands, there is nothing. Silence. Stillness.

Monk’s press conference today did hint we are close to getting someone over the line. The profile and experience of that person we are yet to learn. So while that story rumbles on, I’m going to choose to totally ignore it, and leave it to next week to pick apart.

So what else has been going on at the U’s this week? After the absolute madness of Saturday’s result, not much really. Saturday’s game did give us enough talking points to fill a month worth of pods, so we can get into a few more of those here. We’ve got brilliant debuts, a nuts game, and some bullishness going into the next one to keep you going while you refresh the United social media accounts in the vain hope of that fabled clock emoji.

📰 News From The U’s 📰

• Shayne Lavery has been called up by Northern Ireland for the internationals next weekend. Please don’t get injured, Shayne. Kaikai and O’Riordan have also been called up for international duty.

• United’s women’s team lost 2-0 at the hands of Norwich City, meaning their season has not got off to the best start either: 2 losses in 2 and no goals scored.

• It was great to see United legends Tom Youngs and Dave Kitson back at the Abbey on Saturday, and what a treat of a game too.

✍️ At The Match ✍️

U’s 4-4 Blackpool

Written by Owen Kiernan. Subscribe to The Antler for regular match reports.

The Good

Shane Lavery: Got off the mark against his old club, and then earned us a point late on. Didn’t stop running, and looks like he’s going to be a real handful for opposition defenders this season.

The comeback: Under certain former managers we’d have collapsed there. Dead and buried at half-time, things got worse not long after. But these guys didn’t give up and ran themselves in to the ground chasing that win. If we’d have played for five more minutes there would only have been one winner (us). The football was lively, exciting and full of heart, and probably a great advert for what we can expect from Monk. We won’t roll people over every week, but we’ll pick up wins and draws here and there through sheer effort alone.

Brandon Njoku: Impact Sub. Came on, almost scored, then followed up with a goal a few minutes later. There’s been lots of chat about just how involved in the first team he’s going to be this season, but on this showing he deserves to be in the conversation as much as anyone.

Korey Smith (60 minutes onwards): Turned in to Xavi after an hour of stinking the place out.

Josh Stokes: Looks like a hell of a player - if he’d have finished that chance to win us the game he’d be a U’s legend already. He looks a bit like a school bully, and plays like one too - he’s got some bookings in him, but if he keeps his head he’ll be a really important player for us.

Liam Bennett: It’s so important we keep him. Monk has preferred Gibbons a couple of times this season, but Bennett is ten times the player going forward, and no worse in defence.

Danny Andrew’s Free Kick: I’m not going to lie, I turned to my dad and said this is going straight over the NRE, but it was almost perfect and got the comeback underway.

The Subs: So so wrong against Crawley, so so right this week.

Tom Youngs: It was great (and a little sad) to see Tom Youngs back at the club and hearing his memories at half time. One of the finest players to ever play for the U’s, his career sadly cut short by the onset of MS which has confined him to a wheelchair. One of my favourite players as a youngster, his book is well worth a read.

The Bad

Our defending: Error after error again. Cut these out and we’ll make things easier for ourselves.

Korey Smith (1-60 minutes): This guy’s meant to be an upgrade on Jordan Cousins? He’s not even an upgrade on Gary Deegan.

The first half: I, and everyone around me, thought Blackpool would go on and score 3 or 4 more in the second half, that’s how bad we looked. I thought we’d probably be relegated by February playing how we did. Let’s not let the result and the positives paper over the cracks, Blackpool looked far better than us in every position on the pitch and they’ll be really disappointed with the result. Hopefully a one-off because we’re not going to come back from 4-1 down every week. The defence needs tightening up, whether that’s by a change of formation or returning Morrison to the starting XI we can’t rely on a CB pairing of Ibsen Rossi & O’Riordan as their inexperience could be our undoing.

Sullay Kaikai: A particularly poor game from him, and someone who’ll need to get into top gear pretty quickly if he’s to keep his place in the team.

The Ugly

James Brophy: Can’t defend, can’t score, more one-footed than Long John Silver. I know he got the assist for the first goal, but this was probably his worst performance in a U’s shirt. At fault for both Blackpool goals, either through naivety or just not being good enough. We can debate how much he adds to the team he is until the cows come home, but at some point you simply need to accept he isn’t a very polished footballer. Yes he runs with the ball a bit and is kind of exciting to watch, but he does fuck-all with it almost every time. We got rid of shot-shy players like Lankester over the summer, and Brophy should have followed him out the door. Hopefully the emergence of Stokes and Longelo will mean we don’t see too much more of him.

🧐 View From The Away End 🧐

Blackpool

From Jack Fallon

Going into the first game of the post-Critchley era, with Richard Keogh in his first senior coaching role (albeit only interim), we didn’t really know what to expect. But I don’t think anyone at the Abbey would have expected what played out on Saturday. A 4-1 lead, our centre half scoring the exact same goal twice, defensive mix-ups for both teams, and Shayne Lavery bagging twice against his former team. It had everything.

Even though we blew a three goal lead I think there’s lots of reasons to be cheerful. It felt like more of a shackles-off approach than what we’d played under Critchley. Joseph up front took his goal really nicely as well, and was probably our best player.

With regards to Cambridge, I know full well that when the ball is scrambling around in the box, Shayne Lavery is absolutely going to be the player to stick it away. I also think there’s some really decent operators in the Cambridge squad: Smith, Andrew, Kaikai (who we know well at Pool and can drift in and out of games but is always a threat), to name a few. I think there’s a lot of similarities between us from that game; going forward the ability to create lots of chances, but also both looking a bit ropey at the back.

Overall what an entertaining game. From my perspective, any other weekend you’d be gutted for blowing a 4-1 lead, but we might even look back at the way we played at points this weekend and think of it as a bit of a turning point for us.

FANCY BEATING US AT EFL FANTASY? LINK BELOW 👇

🔢 Stats Corner 🔢

• United’s xG of average of 1.57 ranks 13th in League One so far.

• Danny Andrew’s xG Buildup per 90 minutes ranks in the top 10 in the whole division so far - this number is essentially the “quality” of a player’s buildup-play, or rather, how they are able to consistently facilitate good-quality possessions for their team.

These two stats are taken from Ben Griffis’ brilliant first monthly column for UTAS, looking at the data behind the U’s performance. It’s a must-read.

• With 5 loan players on our books (Richards, Reyes, O’Riordan, Stokes, Longelo), we are at our maximum for a matchday squad. If we signed another, one of them wouldn’t be able to be named in our squad.

🔮 Opposition Preview 🔮

Bristol Rovers (A)

• Last 5 (all comps): WLDDL - Rovers have had a very indifferent start to the campaign, winning their opening game at home to Northampton thanks to a last-minute winner, followed by a goalless draw away at Rotherham and a 2-0 loss at Stockport (it happens to the best of us). They’ve only scored one, but also only conceded two so far.

• Last time out: Bristol Rovers 1-0 U’s, 16th April 2024. Chris Martin (not that one) headbutting Jobe and then going on to score a 90th minute winner. That game.

• Our H2H: P9, W2, L6, D1. Not a happy hunting ground.

• Manager: Matt Taylor. It sounds like the jury is still very much out on Taylor down at the Mem. After coming in to replace Barton in December, the positivity of a fast start was undone when they finished the season really poorly. If that was just a classic mid-table beachy football team or a sign of a bigger problem, we shall see.

• One to watch: Promise Omochere. Signed from Fleetwood for half a million quid this summer, this lad has some real… promise.

• Former U’s players: Jevani Brown. Need I say more?

🏟️ Under The Other Stands 🏟️

• There are only two teams left on 0 points as United dramatically scraped one back to climb out of the relegation zone. Orient and Shrewsbury are very different stories though: Orient’s opening fixture list of Bolton, Charlton, Birmingham is brutal, and they’ve been very decent if a bit unlucky by all accounts, whereas Shrews sound like they’ve started as poorly as many people predicted this summer.

• At the other end, Stockport won again, putting two past our opponents on Saturday. They’ve become the fourth promoted team ever to win their first three games without conceding, after Huddersfield, 1920-21 (top-flight), Carlisle, 1974-75 (top-flight), and Lincoln City, 2019-20 (League One).

• Everyone expected Burton games to be mental after the first few games, but they played out an incredibly dull 0-0 against Stevenage in the early kick-off. Good pick for Sky Sports +.

💻 Social Digest 💻

Absolutely brilliant stuff from the Wycombe admin, mocking everyone’s favourite pantomime villain/Fat Controller crossover act Steve Evans after his sour grapes post-match interview.

Former U’s favourite Paul Mullin isn’t to everyone’s fancy amongst Everton fans, it seems.

📚 Read And Listen 🎧

• An attempt to review the 4-4 madness from Jules, Matt, and Swindle in the latest episode of UTAS.

• We’ve already mentioned the first instalment of Get Your Stats Right, but we’ll mention it again here as it really is brilliant.

• The podcast ‘By Far The Greatest Team’ have put together an episode all about the legendary John Beck side.

🕺 What’s Spinning? 🕺

Irish lads Fontaines D.C. have recently released their hugely anticipated fourth album. Take your pick.